The image from Henry Darger used in the cover design of the NYRB’s reissue of a novel from 1929 by Richard Hughes, is apparently all too appropriate, if we trust reviewer Andrew Sean Greer.
To say A High Wind in Jamaica is a novel about children who are abducted by pirates is to make it seem like a children’s book. But that’s completely wrong; its theme is actually how heartless children are.
* * *
…the children have such a deformed sense of right and wrong that it’s soon the pirates who are frightened of them.